As lasers become more powerful, the need for protection becomes greater. Accidental discharges or their use as a weapon makes protection from them an increasing necessity. Just as the bulletproof vest significantly decreased fatalities from guns, laser proof armor may decrease injuries or deaths because of lasers. Damage to human eyes and optical sensors can be reduced by the use of optical limiting, with new materials and devices that have a high linear transmission up to a predetermined input energy, above which the nonlinear properties of the materials or devices limit the transmission of light. In past decades, various materials including organic dyes, carbon black suspensions, organometallics, fullerenes, semiconductors, liquid crystals, and nanostructures, were studied as optical limiters [1]. However, for practical applications, there is still no single material or limiting mechanism that can meet the stringent application requirements [2]. For example, C60 solutions are benchmark standards for optical limiters at 532 nm; however, they suffer from a low damage threshold and are not a broadband optical limiter. Carbon black (CB) suspensions are benchmark standards for broadband optical limiters. However, they do not work well for short pulses such as picosecond pulses. They present a turnover behavior at a 10-Hz repetition rate in some solvents with relatively high viscosities [3, 4] and lose stability over time due to carbon particle aggregation.
Therefore, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.